The Amelioration

Ben turned 5 today

 He chose a Despicable Me Minion theme this year. 
This is his face when he saw his cake for the first time. 
 He said, "ahh it's soooo cute" which made my day. Professional cake decorators turn your head. Cake wrecks please pass me by!! Second time with fondant, getting better.  
The kids made minions for the wall
Amelia gave him a superhero mask. 
And his big gift was noise canceling headphones, and trust me, he cannot hear a thing I am saying with them on!!!

He is so sweet. When asked what kind of cake he wanted (while standing in the candy aisle giving him the sky as the limit with lots of peanutty, dairy filled ideas) he says," I just want something Amelia can have too". He picked chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and crushed oreos.
He is so loving. Nothing but kisses all day for Miles and tells everyone something he likes about them almost everyday without prompting. He randomly tells you he loves you for no apparent reason.

He has a great sense of humor. This boy loves to be silly. Although quiet and shy at first, once you get in with him, he is constantly telling you funny stuff and laughing about everything.

His crazy ability to remember lines from movies and tv shows. Think a mini version and less socially awkward Abed from Community. Everything can be related to something he's seen on a screen.

He is very creative. Between his lego building, robot drawing and story telling, I cannot wait to see what this boy will do in his life.

Ben 1 day old.

And most of all, he is so good-natured and patient. He puts up with so many things I often feel he shouldn't have to and despite all of it, he has nothing but happiness and kindness to give. He often reminds me what a better person I can be. I love this boy and am so glad he is ours. 

 or Ben and his gigantic bright green briefs!!

Slip and slides
 Trampoline jumping

High flying

  Eating

In April Philip's sister and kids came for a visit, only for her daughter to come down a few hours later with a terrible flu and had to leave the next day. We were feeling very gipped. So they came back for Memorial weekend. We had lots of windy, warm weather for kites, bubbles, trampoline jumping, barbecuing and our newish tradition of donut making.  And not one sickie!! She is also a very talented photographer and I am sharing some of her fantastic pics. It was almost exactly a year ago she came and took these (and I added one so you could see how much our kids have grown up in a year)

And this is them now enjoying our yummy donuts.

This is still my go-to, never fail donut recipe. This is also a good buttermilk old fashioned one I've tried twice fairly successfully. I did make it dairy free with soy buttermilk in exchange for the sour cream. I used the glaze for the old fashioned ones to glaze the raised ones and left the old fashioned plain because the dough is pretty sweet on it's own. Best fresh and warm, but if you have leftovers, freeze them and rewarm in the microwave per my sis-in-law's suggestion and they were YUMMY too!!

 And here are some fun action pics.

Amelia finished school. Here is a contrast pic of her first and last day.

It was so bright she is making a funny face, but we were in a rush to get to school so I didn't realize it. But you get the point. She has really lost that baby face. And maybe grown a little too. It was really important to her that she lose her first tooth in first grade at the school. Her teacher is the school's unofficial tooth puller and if you lose it there, you get to go to the office and get a plastic tooth box to put it in. Every kid in her class lost one and she was feeling a little left out. A week or so before the last day of school, her first one was a tiny bit loose. She spent the next 3 or 4 days wiggling and wiggling and wiggling that tooth. The night before the last day of school she was so desperate that she wanted me to try and pull it, but between the shrieking and squirming, I couldn't get it out. So finally on the last day after all the fun and all the kids went home, she asks her teacher to pull it. Sure enough it took 2 seconds and there it was. I could tell on Amelia's face that she wanted to scream or cry but did not want to do it in front of her teacher so she sat perfectly still. It was bleeding quite a bit and the teacher kind of screamed because it was so funny that it made her kind of embarrassed.  But pretty soon she was back to her usual grinning, confident self.

Hope my brother doesn't mind, but a few weeks ago he received his MBA. We went and celebrated and cheered Jared "Awesome" Hansen!!  And of course no celebration is complete without dessert.

Here's some pics from Miles' first birthday party. He loves to growl like a monster and he's so big we always call him a monster, so it only seemed fitting to give him a monster themed party. Grandma,Grandpa and Aunt Ali came. They brought Miles a present to open and he loved the wrapping paper so much he was quite offended when the kids started to show him how to rip it off. You can see in the top left pic that he has ripped some of it, but he's not really happy. It was hilarious watching him do it. Every rip pained him but he kept going because we were clapping. He was not sure of the whole thing.  He loves balls and I think it's the best boy first birthday gift, so since we already have a collection of balls, we got him a little inflatable pool filled with ball pit balls. He thinks it so much fun. Grandma and Grandpa brought a basketball hoop so he can practice shooting for when he is 6 foot 10 and getting ready for the NBA!!! The kids also picked out a Monster's Inc fork and spoon set because he always is stealing spoons if the dishwasher is open. The Stevenson's sent another great ball that he likes to carry because he can palm it perfectly with one hand!!  His Brindley cousins sent him some monster books and a stuffed animal of the abominable snowman from Monster's Inc. He sleeps with it, shows you how it growls and drags it around too!!

We made a monster cake and little monster cupcakes. The kids got to put them together with eyes and hands and teeth. Miles thought they were so funny.He loved being sung too. He softly licked the frosting off for a bit and started to put his face in it, like I always wanted one of our kids to do, but then quickly retreated back to the finger licking. The kids thought this was hilarious(you can see Ben in the top left picture laughing to death). Green frosting is not ideal for a birthday cake you are giving a baby, so we gave him a cupcake so he could really eat cake for the first time. He, of course, loved it. It was carrot cake since he's kind of our Easter baby.  He loved going to Grandpa every two seconds, which is usually what he does for Philip, so he was feeling a little upstaged but loved hearing how Miles' sweetness reminded them of when Philip was a baby.
 

I will post more pics from his birthday later.